In the manufacture of lens from molten glass it is desirable that at least one surface of the lens have a high optical quality without chill wrinkles in such surface to eliminate grinding and polishing of such one surface, and it is necessary that the shear marks made by shearing of the glass gob from which the lens is finally formed be out of the quality area of the glass of the finally formed lens. In the forming of relatively elongate types of lens or lens of other odd shapes it has, prior to the present invention, been necessary to form the lens blanks or preformed mold charges by hand to eliminate the aforesaid chill wrinkles in the glass of the lens blanks or glass preforms. Such manual preforming of mold charges is obviously time consuming and, therefore, uneconomical. It is, accordingly, an object of the present invention to provide an apparatus for preforming from gobs of molten glass elongate or similar glass mold charges without chill or shear marks in the quality area of the mold charges.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a method of preforming an elongate glass mold charge and delivering such charge to the forming cavity of a forming mold with a virgin or untouched side of the glass facing downwardly in such mold.
Other objects and characteristic features of the invention will become apparent as the description proceeds.